As the market reels from ever-changing news about President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes, Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen detailed how his customers are dealing with a volatile global trade environment
“It’s very hard to plan a supply chain when it’s changing day to day, so I think it’s really hard for these businesses to figure out, you know, what is the government going to do, and how should they set themselves up,” he said. “Possible that this will lead to higher prices in, for consumer goods, but there’s all kinds of variables that may lower taxes or make, create a simpler regulatory framework that might increase demand.”
Flexport offers services that help companies manage global supply chain logistics. According to Petersen, the company’s customer base has been trying to import more and more goods as they’ve expected escalating duties, especially with China. Over the weekend, Trump announced tariff hikes for some of the U.S.’s major trading partners, China, Canada and Mexico. Petersen said the timeline for these changes was “unprecedented,” as even during Trump’s first administration, there was at least a month’s notice before they went into effect. So, he said he wasn’t surprised when the president ended up pausing increases on Mexico for a month on Monday. Later in the evening, Trump also announced he would do the same for Canada.
Petersen called the Trump administration’s roll back of the “de minimis” trade exemption a “big change.” This stipulation, often viewed as a trade loophole, allowed exporters to send goods direct to consumers and under $800 duty free, and they were often used by companies like Temu and Shein. Aside from the Chinese e-commerce giants, Petersen said 30 of the top hundred Shopify brands had also been importing this way.
All of these Trump changes may change the trade landscape in other ways, Petersen added. He said the price of air freight may decrease significantly if Shein and Temu are no longer shipping at their current volume. Peterson also said Houthi rebels have started to “back off a little bit” on their serious disruptions of trade in the Red Sea, perhaps due to fear of action from the Trump administration. He said there’s “rumors and talk” that container ships might start to go through the Red Sea again, which would bring down the price of ocean freight.
“It’s hard to operate in a really simple black and white world when global trade is this complex,” Petersen said.